Memories
by timydamonkey
Summary: Oneshot. Set some time after The Chase. It wasn't that Ian and Barbara had hated travelling with the Doctor – it'd just been that it was potentially the only opportunity to get back, and at the end of the day, there's no place like home.


Memories: _(by timydamonkey)_

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who and don't pretend to. 

Author's Notes: The 60s is my favourite era of Doctor Who, but I'm nervous about writing it for potential lack of authenticity, both in dialogue and description. But, as with writing Turlough, I'm not going to improve until I try - so here's a first attempt.

Several episodes are (hopefully subtly) referenced: An Unearthly Child, The Romans and The Chase, that I can remember offhand.

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She was standing in a junkyard. 

The children at Coal Hill School blatantly thought she was a bit odd, even for a teacher. They never mentioned it – whether they were too polite or had been warned not to, she didn't know – but she could read the looks on their faces when they saw their teacher standing on street corners, looking at nothing in particular.

She didn't do it often. Just… sometimes. She was waiting to see a blue police box that, if you asked anybody, they'd probably claim had never been there. The box and its occupants seemed to have a way of slipping in and out of peoples lives without anybody noticing, she found. It was disconcerting.

The box was called a TARDIS. She'd travelled in it once.

To be honest, Barbara didn't know what she was doing. If the Doctor had come up to her and asked her if she'd go with him again, she'd have said no. She'd have thought he was crazy. She didn't know what she wanted: to bump into him, tell him everything had gone back to normal? To see him and assure herself it had actually happened, even though she knew it had?

It wasn't that they'd hated travelling with the Doctor. It was that they'd missed home and they'd had a decision – if we don't take this… will we ever get home?

It was Barbara's opinion that the Doctor wouldn't have been able to steer a bicycle, let alone a TARDIS.

If they'd have stayed, how long would they have been there, Barbara wondered. Just a few more days? Weeks? Years? What if he could never get back to 1963 and they were stuck there until they died? Or until _he_ died – he looked so old. She knew he wasn't exactly human, and she's found herself wondering, is this man even so old, for his race? Maybe he'd have centuries left.

There was a time machine in front of them that the daleks weren't going to reoccupy and, behind them, a ship that shook like it was going to fall apart and was more unpredictable than the weather. It would probably end up landing in a volcano, one day.

She could stare through the machine and see her home.

They'd left. She didn't regret it. She just wondered, sometimes, how the Doctor was doing, how Stephen and Vicki were.

Footsteps crunched from behind her. "Barbara?" It was Ian's voice. She was somehow unsurprised he knew where to find her. A pause. "Were you looking for him?"

"I just wondered," she said in a non-committal manner, "how they were doing. It's hard to know when you don't even get postcards." They shared a smile.

Ian put an arm around her. "Everything's a bit different, now. We get to move on with our lives, but there's always something there." He started to escort her out of the junkyard.

"Did you know that I somehow look at the stars all night, and think, 'I've been there'?"

Barbara asked, "How did you know which ones you've – we've - been to?"

He smiled. "I don't know – but it's nice to think, isn't it?"

She laughed. "I suppose it is." She paused for a moment. "Sometimes, teaching is difficult now," she admitted. "It's difficult to explain how you know things that are not only out of the curriculum but contradict the things you're supposed to be teaching. I can hardly say I met some Romans once, can I?"

"You'll cope," he said. "Sometimes it's better that people don't know exactly what sort of things happened, don't you think?"

"I suppose so," she conceded, then smiled. "But I bet the Doctor would have a fit if he knew."

Ian chuckled. "I don't think I could disagree with that. But the Doctor, I suppose, has moved on from here."

Barbara considered, then said, "I think you're right, Ian; he's moved on. And so have we."

_Fin._


End file.
